Getting Back To My Hungarians

Hello All

It's been a while since I have done anything with my Hungarians, but when I signed up for the Brighton Bash 2013 so I decided paint up some Hungarian Infantry.

The first platoon I set about doing was an Infantry Platoon.

These were not the funnest unit I have every painted! A lot of brown followed by a lot of brown! But once I got past the brown stage and added the other colours they really come together and in the end I was quite happy with them.

Next up I painted my Nimrods. I love these little anti-aircraft tanks. They look really modern for a WW2 AFV, they are also a great little unit in the game.

I followed a colour scheme I found on a very good WW2 AFV website (can't find the link now) instead of the more common tri-colour scheme as I wanted them to match my Zrinyi II's.

Next up I have the second infantry platoon, mortars, Pak 40's and 149mm artillery. So plenty to keep me going for the tournament in January.

As always thanks for reading and until next time.

Ben

Can't see the Wood for the Trees!

Forest tutorial

So I love making terrain! It adds so much to a game. 

When I returned to war gaming 7 years ago I was quite happy to use books for hills, unpainted GW buildings and fish tank decorations. As I've gone on though I have developed such a love of painted terrain, it really makes the whole game cinematic, and allows yourself to get lost in the narrative. 

My current FoW terrain I've mainly been working on this year, the biggest part is my 'realm of battle board' I picked it up cheap with a minor deformity but it looks great as a base for all types of games.

The one thing I've missed up till now has been woods. I like the battlefield in a box ones, but it's not much for what you pay for. So I decided to do my own!

 So I started with some MDF board which I carved into some irregular curved shapes of various sizes. This way I can either have lots of small woods, or put a couple of smaller pieces on a larger bit, for a bigger foot print but still easily stored, and easy to move models over!

Once it was carved I sprayed it all black. This way if anything chips off later it will show black which always blends in IMHO.
Next was making mounds of Stone this breaks up the base, and adds a different texture I picked up a big bag from my local model railway store

 I find terrain making very thirsty work - i recommend frequent hydration to keep you going

Following this I mixed up a load of sand and PVA and spread it unevenly over the rest of the base to give some texture.

After that a liberal coat of brown spray. (Fur brown by army painter)

With that done I dry brushed the brown with some 'tau sept ochre' gave it a nice warm sandy base - in keeping with my other terrain.

After that it was the stones, painting on some dark grey first roughly ( I used the last of my adeptus battle grey) following that it's uneven dry brush of 'astronomicon grey' and then 'skull
 white'

 Next it's the beautiful hot glue gun, and attaching my trees (again sourced from my local model railway shop!)

 Depending on the size of wood I placed 1-4 trees, it was mainly down to aesthetics, but having a base to help work out what was 'too close' helped

With these in place I the painted on patches of PVA glue and water over exposed areas, sprinkling on some dark grass initially and then a little lighter grass. 

And that's it forests for all!

 Sherman's on Patrol through the forest - knowing me they'll all bog down in a sec!

A Tale of Two Winter Gamers : The Battered Bastards of Bastogne

Hello All,

So as I spoke about last week, myself and Adam are doing a Tale of Gamers Challenge based around the Battle of the Bulge. It was decided that I would collect the US forces while Adam would paint up the Axis (see Adam's post on his plans here). So I see about reading through Blood, Guts and Glory, Devil's Charge and Nuts to see which US lists interested me. I have always liked US Armoured Rifles and Tank Destroyers but to me the Bugle is about the PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry) trying to hold the German advance while the Armoured forces raced to the front, so they are for now out (well until April/May time). So looking at the Infantry there really was only one option for me Easy Company! I know some people out there will roll their eyes at that but Band of Brothers is in my top 3 TV series of all time (The Wire and BSG being the other two) and US Airborne were my first FOW army way back during my first failed attempt to get into FOW; so I also feel I have unfinished business (plus I can add lots of Band of Brother quotes in the AARs!).

So army decided I moved onto the models. The Battlefront Winter Paras all have winter coats which is a little wrong to me as every account I have read about the 101st Airborne during the Bugle is how under equipped they were for a winter battle. Fortunately I have a load of US Paras from a failed Market Garden project I was going to coolect, so I plan on mixing the bases up a bit have a 50/50 mix of winter clothed and normal clothed infantry.

The list was a lot harder to work out! Every list I wrote seemed to be 35pts over or under with nothing easy to take out or add in to get to 1750pts. But after a complete re think I finally got a lost sorted. I'm happy as I have included all but 2 of the Easy Company Warriors, not only does this give the list a real Easy Company feel but it would also give me alot of points to mess around with if I decided to play a non Easy list when I want to mix things up.

The list:-

HQ
-Spiers (I'm not sure he's worth the points but it's Spiers, he's to cool not to take)
-Lipton - 100pts

Para Rifle Platoon
- Extra Bazooka
- Toccoa Sergeant
- 'Shifty' Powers - 315pts

Para Rilfe Platoon
- Extra Bazooka
- Toccoa Sergeant - 295pts

Para Engineer Platoon
- 3 Bazookas - 275pts

4 M18 Tank Destroyers - 410pts

6 105mm Glider Artillery - 210pts

4 Airborne Recon Jeeps - 110pts

AOP - 40pts

1750pts

So the first month is only 17 days away as I write this. I have bought most of the list already, I'm now mostly waiting on the Winter Paras to turn up but I really can't wait to start this project.

As always thanks for reading and Currahee!

A Tale of Two Winter Gamers : 25th Panzergrenadierkompanie

So the question you may ask is why out of all the axis bulge lists I chose this one? Well firstly the deal was it had to be a bulge list, sounds obvious but other axis lists had been tempting me.

For my allies I can do infantry, recon and armour, so mechanised infantry seemed the gap to tackle, I also thought basing the infantry in snow would be more fun than constant white wash on tanks.

 The next consideration was list flexibility. The nice thing about panzer grens is that you can change a few support choices and do lists from most books in LW, again a bonus, as they could then be fighting in the snow on the Eastern front, or the freak snow in Normandy, the low countries and Italy lol!

 The other thought was of course money! I've some Germans coming from 'open fire' and they seemed a good choice of model to form the core of the army with trucks - but maybe half tracks in other lists.

I'm also keen on panthers as support, so with little money added I'll be able to do a German armoured list.

So with the above in mind I started with my two compulsory choice + HQ I'm going to mount them in trucks too for some added manoeuvrability.
 I also like the idea of them moving up with at least some company support, so I'll also be getting the Heavy Platoon, with HMG's and mortars for added firepower and help pinning/smoke.

The next option are Panthers, I like the idea of these being able to sit and shoot from a distance but also take any incoming heavy fire away from the advancing grenadiers. Due to having 2 armour slots I'll take two sets of 2.

Next some AAA, the obvious choice here is the triple 15mm mainly as they're a compulsory choice in quite a few lists from BGG so should be good giving air cover, and also hit infantry if needed.

Finally I need a little recon to lift GtG, the 8-rads are cheap so I'll take them to help with that.

 So there we have it, 6 platoons, it's small being a CV list, but the infantry have a heck of a lot of anti infantry and anti tank fire on board, add into that the panthers for more anti tank I feel quite hopeful. I would have liked a little artillery, but I think getting everything in a German list is quite difficult, and I think due to the sheer number of options available in this list it may well have more options available later!

And finally as I read up on the 25th Panzergrenadier Division and Nordwind, I noticed that they were originally an infantry division of Swabians and Bavarians. My lovely girlfriend is Swabian, and I frequently head over there, so that made the choice even more fitting.

 Ic and 2IC - kublewagons

 Panzer grenadier 3 sections all PF/MG with trucks 

Panzer grenadier 3 sections all PF/MG with trucks 

 Panzer grenadier Heavy Platoon 2 sections HMG and  1 mortar section with trucks 

2 Panthers 

2 Panthers 

3 KFz triple's 

2 8-rad

Panzer Grenadier Platoon

At long long  last I have finish my Panzer Grenadier platoon.

These suckers did take me a while to complete and I really felt the absence of my airbrush.

That said I really enjoyed painting them and as promised in my last post I made sure I did a piece of terrain.

In battle I've struggled to use them to any effect.  It's always a toss up between mounted or not and if not do I want the halftracks on the table.

I think a general rule of thumb is mounted when facing infantry and dismounted if facing tanks.  In today's battle against Adam, they went down pretty hard to an artillery bombardment from a double width howitzer template.  Then I made a mistake with the rules, which states they can auto un-bail from a bombardment, oh well live and learn I guess.

If anyone has any feedback I'd appreciate it, i'm always looking to improve my modelling and painting skills so anything really is of help.

That's all for now

Dave

A Tale of Two Winter Gamers – Because we know winter is coming!

A Monthly Painting Challenge Starting 1st Nov 2012 

Hello All,

Adam and me have been playing with the idea of a painting challenge for a while now. We are both fans of the old White Dwarf Tale of Four Gamers that ran back in 1997 (I think, it was in the first WD I bought anyway) and so decided to base it on a similar sort of idea. We both really wanted to do the Bulge and with Blood Guts and Glory, Devils Charge and Nuts having just come out it seemed the right choice for us. After a quick talk it was decided that I’m taking on the US as I haven’t done a US since I got back into FOW and Adam would do the Germans as he hasn’t got an axis army, but we’ll both talk more about are choices in later articles.

We are doing a winter board along with the armies as we thought if you are going to do winter armies they need something to fight over! So this has been put into the challenge with the goal of one piece of terrain a month.

So the Agreement-

1)      To complete the set points or unit each month and to complete a Bulge themed terrain piece.

2)      The first month will be a core platoon plus the HQ.

3)      The second month will be the second core platoon.

4)      The target for the third month is to have at least 1000pts painted

5)      From month 4 onwards the target is to complete 250pts (with a little ley way) a month.

6)      For month 5 instead of doing terrain we are going to do themed objective markers.

7)      At the end of 6 Months we should have 1750pts to 2000pts finished, 10 Terrain pieces and 4 themed objectives.

8)      Games with AAR on the blog from month 4 with the aim to have one AAR a month.

9)      From month 7 to 12 will be a little more ad hoc with a goal of 1 platoon a month.

10)  We have a plan of a Battle of the Bugle Firestorm Campaign that I’m working on as we speak which will start once the first 1750pts is finished.

Forfeit –

            If myself or Adam fail to complete the months target then as a forfeit the person who failed must buy a 6 pack of beer for the other person to buy back into the challenge. If both of us fail then we both must buy beer to buy back in and we’ll get very drunk watching rugby or something.

So there you have it, expect to see me and Adam post up details of the armies we’ll be doing and our overall goals in the next week or so.

As always thanks for reading

Ben

We're on Facebook!

Hello All

I created a facebook acount for the blog the other day Click Here To Check It Out.. I want to do something more than just use it to promote the blog, but I'm not 100% sure what to do. If any one has any ideas feel free to post below.

As always thanks for your time Ben